Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452015-03-13T23:01:00-05:00TypePadAgent Cody Banks (2003)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb07a88840970d2015-03-13T23:01:00-05:002014-11-09T13:37:56-05:00*/**** starring Frankie Muniz, Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon, Keith David screenplay by Zack Stentz & Ashley Miller and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski directed by Harald Zwart VIEW IN iTUNES - USA|CANADA by Walter Chaw A pint-sized version of a James Bond film, Harald Zwart's Agent Cody Banks locates that series' fascination with modes of conveyance and breasts and places it cannily in the realm of early adolescence. It belongs there, after all, but burying Frankie Muniz's face in Angie Harmon's breasts (a second attempt is recognized and discouraged) is filmed statutory rape, even if he's not complaining. Its screenplay by committee (four writers, with a fifth credited with story) is flat and uninvolving (and feckless), with the sole highlight coming in a background PA announcement asking the owner of a silver Aston Martin to move it from the handicapped parking zone. Otherwise, the picture is just a collection of teensploitation formulas ("the bet" chief among them) married to a few weak gadgets and the same sort of world-saving wish-fulfillment fantasy that Bond has long since made stultifying and passé. Cody (Muniz) is a fifteen-year-old CIA spook who finds himself recruited to woo T.S. Eliot-loving prep school tart Natalie (Hilary...Bill ChambersThe Peacemaker (1997) - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb07a852d0970d2014-11-10T00:01:00-05:002014-11-09T01:18:16-05:00*/**** Image C Sound B- Extras F starring George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Marcel Iures screenplay by Michael Schiffer directed by Mimi Leder VIEW IN iTUNES - USA|CANADA by Walter Chaw With boring being the one thing from which an action movie can't recover, studio supergroup DreamWorks SKG marking their debut by giving professional director of boring action movies Mimi Leder the bank suggests they were asking to make a terrible first impression. I guess, in their defense, Leder showed promise after a storied career helming boring television episodes--"ER" the place where executive producer John Wells spied her "potential" to one day direct motherfucking Pay It Forward. Wells's own participation in The Peacemaker likewise explains the presence of George Clooney (still trying to pop the balloon of A-list opener) and, later, of Clooney's "ER" replacement Goran Visnjic in an eye-blink cameo. But of all the things the curiously-prescient The Peacemaker predicts*, the lasting one is Leder's incandescent career as a truly awful filmmaker and DreamWorks as a particularly well-funded curiosity that has only confirmed everyone's suspicions about the eponymous Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen. It takes the acceptance of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker over a decade later to restore...Bill ChambersJohnny English (2003) [Widescreen] - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01a3fb8a7891970b2014-01-03T00:01:00-05:002014-01-02T14:37:22-05:00*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+ starring Rowan Atkinson, Natalie Imbruglia, Ben Miller, John Malkovich screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and William Davies directed by Peter Howitt by Bill Chambers The only thing mustier than James Bond movies are parodies of them, and as if we needed proof, along comes the excruciatingly predictable 007 send-up Johnny English, in which Rowan Atkinson soars to the lows of Leslie Nielsen at his most contemptibly greedy (see: Spy Hard). (I like both comedians, Atkinson and Nielsen, but only when they're leashed to masters Richard Curtis and David Zucker, respectively.) If it's true that Atkinson was recently motivated by the stateside failure of this very film to check himself into an Arizona rehab centre for depressed celebrities (and frankly, don't blame audiences--distributor Universal didn't exactly tax themselves advertising Johnny English to domestic moviegoers), I hope his caretakers remind him in haste that none of Monty Python's features grossed an enviable sum abroad, that the James Bond franchise has already satirized itself into the ground (it's no casual point that Johnny English was co-scripted by the same writing team behind The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day), and that his...Bill ChambersSyriana (2005)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c019b02db2635970c2013-12-14T00:01:00-05:002013-12-13T21:58:24-05:00**/**** starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper written and directed by Stephen Gaghan by Walter Chaw An omnibus of shorthand outrage standing in place of actual information, Stephen Gaghan's perfectly respectable--principled, even--Syriana reassures us with its glut of disconnected pop-up liberal soundbites that it's weary and wise enough for the both of us should it be the case, most likely, that we're just weary. But on the off chance there's nothing to connect to here despite all the grandstanding, it makes clear that at the end of the day it's really about something as simple as not taking your family for granted. Call it the secular Magnolia, itself a similarly longish, flashy film that was also about being kind to your children. There isn't anything for us to do with the dry intellectualizing of Syriana: once we're told that the CIA sends assassins around the world, that sometimes Arab kids are turned into suicide bombers by wackos, that the oil industry is a nepotistic disaster, and that as soon as the oil runs out in the Middle East, the emirs of Saudi Arabia will be back "in tents, chopping each other's heads off," what are we left...Bill ChambersFathom (1967) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0192abe96ca7970d2013-07-10T23:01:00-05:002013-07-07T15:53:41-05:00*/**** Image A- Sound B starring Tony Franciosa, Raquel Welch, Ronald Fraser, Greta Chi screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr. directed by Leslie H. Martinson by Walter Chaw There's something desperately wrong with veteran television director Leslie H. Martinson's spy spoof Fathom, and it took me the whole movie to figure it out: Raquel Welch, as the titular va-va-va-voom dental hygienist cum parachutist cum superspy spends the entire film running from symbols of aggressive virility. Clad fetchingly in a variety of swimsuits and tight shirts (but never pants), our Fathom is pursued by a man with a speargun, by a Russian paramour mistaking our heroine for a prostitute, through various tunnels, and through a train. In its barest form, Fathom appears to be a rape fantasy involving a helpless, screaming, occasionally castrating Welch (though, tellingly, the only person she kills is another woman), who plays a variation on her standard cocktease and--naturally--deserves getting prodded about by a bull while a collection of bad guys poke at her with phallic shunts. RUNNING TIME 99 minutes MPAA Not Rated ASPECT RATIO(S) 2.35:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 2.0 (Stereo) English DD 2.0 (Mono) French DD 2.0 (Mono) Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono) CC Yes SUBTITLES...Bill ChambersThe Manchurian Candidate (1962) [Special Edition] + Deathdream (1972) - DVDs + Uncle Sam (1997) - DVD|Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01901dee027b970b2013-06-27T23:01:00-05:002013-06-27T11:18:16-05:00THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE ****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+ starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon directed by John Frankenheimer Dead of Night ***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A- starring John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Richard Backus, Henderson Forsythe screenplay by Alan Ormsby directed by Bob Clark UNCLE SAM **½/**** DVD - Image B+ Sound B Extras A- BD - Image B Sound A Extras A- starring Isaac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Timothy Bottoms, Robert Forster screenplay by Larry Cohen directed by William Lustig THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As the zeitgeist is one of those things we tend to discuss in the past tense, you have to wonder whether it's a vacuum or a barometer. In other words, the point at which culturemongers finally lunge at a craze is usually once it's begun shrieking its death rattle, and yet a post-mortem of said craze invariably divulges a complex tapestry of art and politics, the ascription of happenstance to which seems preposterous. Our own Walter Chaw brilliantly observes in recent omnibus reviews pairing Love Me If You Dare with Valentin and Dodgeball...Bill ChambersThe Love Guru (2008) + Get Smart (2008)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0192ab49167d970d2013-06-19T23:01:00-05:002013-06-18T20:57:03-05:00THE LOVE GURU ZERO STARS/**** starring Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Ben Kingsley screenplay by Mike Myers & Graham Gordy directed by Marco Schnabel GET SMART ***/**** starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, James Caan screenplay by Tim J. Astle & Matt Ember directed by Peter Segal by Walter Chaw Dick this, cock that, penis penis penis--let me mention in the interest of full, ahem, disclosure that I don't think Mike Myers is funny; that Chris Farley's death was a great shame for a lot of reasons, among the worst that his passing opened the door for Myers to voice Shrek; and that it's not amusing in the slightest to make an endless stream of johnson jokes. The Love Guru has Myers sort of taking a wave at a cheap Indian accent in a redux of that Eddie Murphy triumph Holy Man--which means, essentially, that he proves himself not as committed as Will Ferrell and not as feral as Adam Sandler and not as neutered, as it happens, as Eddie Murphy. Myers, in other words, is less than his peers, doomed to be upstaged at every turn by anyone unfortunate enough to share a scene with him. (Doomed,...Bill ChambersMission: Impossible III (2006)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c0192aa1b5835970d2013-05-19T21:17:14-05:002013-05-19T21:17:14-05:00*/**** starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup screenplay by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & J.J. Abrams directed by J.J. Abrams by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. That classic combination of a film that doesn't make any sense with one that doesn't inspire anyone to invest an iota of emotion in giving a crap, J.J. Abrams's Mission: Impossible III (hereafter M:i:III) isn't convoluted like the first two instalments so much as it's just incoherent and loud. It's the camera-in-a blender-school of action filmmaking: There's so little understanding of spatial relationships that the whole thing plays like that Naked Gun gag where the gunfight is taking place between two people within arm's reach of one another. An extended heist sequence set in Vatican City, for instance, features the four members of IMF ("Impossible Mission Force") hotshot Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) team (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and the requisite hot Asian chick (Maggie Q)) running around in completely anonymous locations, sticking doodads to walls, and confirming to one another that they're "ready" and "in place." But without knowledge of their plan, their location (respective to one another and their goal, whatever that might be), their peril,...Bill ChambersWarGames (1983) [25th Anniversary Edition] + Saturday Night Fever (1977)/Staying Alive (1983) [Double Feature] - DVDs|Saturday Night Fever [30th Anniversary Special Collector's Edition]- Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017eead44715970d2013-05-04T21:07:42-05:002013-05-04T21:07:42-05:00WARGAMES ***½/**** Image B Sound C Extras A starring Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, Ally Sheedy screenplay by Lawrence Lasker & Walter F. Parkes directed by John Badham SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER ****/**** DVD - Image B Sound B+ Extras C BD - Image A Sound A Extras B- starring John Travolta, Karen Gorney, Barry Miller, Joseph Cali screenplay by Norman Wexler directed by John Badham STAYING ALIVE ZERO STARS/**** Image C+ Sound B+ starring John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, Steve Inwood screenplay by Sylvester Stallone and Norman Wexler directed by Sylvester Stallone by Walter Chaw I hadn't realized until I watched the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD of it how intimately WarGames is embedded in my psyche. I saw it in the theatre as a ten-year-old in 1983 and, for the rest of that decade (the prime of my excited filmgoing experience), I didn't know that movies were ever different. The first time, in fact, that I recognized that movies were human was the first time they revealed themselves as something that could fail to inspire any kind of response at all--and I wonder if that initial moment of disappointment had more to do with the development of my...Bill ChambersThe Fury (1978) [The Limited Edition Series] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017d42e2c3fe970c2013-04-18T12:27:07-05:002013-04-20T00:28:31-05:00***½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D starring Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Carrie Snodgress, Charles Durning screenplay by John Farris, based on his novel directed by Brian DePalma click any image to enlarge by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. While Brian DePalma is nothing if not a leitmotif filmmaker, it's curious that he chose to direct The Fury right after Carrie. Imagine Spielberg following up Jaws with Orca--it's like De Palma was begging to be pigeonholed. And it's not surprising that The Fury wasn't as zeitgeisty: it lacks the classical simplicity and youth appeal of Carrie, with almost no one in the cast under 30 save for future softcore legend Andrew Stevens and Carrie holdover Amy Irving, a good actress who just doesn't have that X factor. But The Fury's echo can still be heard, because its ending is indeed that impactful. Nearly every review mentions it, and the terms in which Pauline Kael and her acolytes described it gave it a kind of porny rep that's since inspired generations of young film buffs to seek the movie out. (Armond White called it an "orgasm.") It is a great ending, but a revisit makes clear that The Fury is...Bill ChambersG.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017d425a5a96970c2013-03-28T10:57:36-05:002013-03-28T11:00:04-05:00*½/**** starring D.J. Cotrona, Byung-hun Lee, Adrianne Palicki, Dwayne Johnson screenplay by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick directed by Jon M. Chu by Angelo Muredda While it's easy to snicker at a title sequence that boasts of "Characters by Hasbro," G.I. Joe: Retaliation (hereafter Retaliation) is the kind of movie you root for. After the banality of predecessor Stephen Sommers, John M. Chu is an inspired choice of director. This is a guy who's made his name by bringing elegance and agility to his two attempts at the surprisingly bullet-proof Step Up franchise. There was reason enough, then, to hope his preference for long takes and earnest interest in bodies in motion would translate to a franchise inspired by a line of action figures. After all, such baubles are nothing if not fetish objects, their biceps studied by the faithful with a mad love usually reserved for dancers, matinee idols, and wrestlers. What better meeting of the three than a project steered by the director of dance films and anchored by Channing Tatum and Dwayne Johnson, née The Rock? Though it was originally slotted for last summer, early word had it that Retaliation was delayed to beef up Tatum's anemic...Bill ChambersThe Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017c36fee332970b2013-02-20T21:10:01-05:002013-02-20T21:15:39-05:00***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras A+ starring Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Nova Pilbeam screenplay by Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, Edwin Greenwood and A.R. Rawlinson directed by Alfred Hitchcock click any image to enlarge by Walter Chaw The first fascination of Alfred Hitchcock's original The Man Who Knew Too Much is that when a dashing foreign agent (Pierre Fresnay) is shot just minutes into the film, it's Jill (Edna Best), the wife in the heroic central couple, who's privy to his last words. They're dancing together in the middle of a ballroom that feels like a glass cage (naturally) when the dastardly deed is done, a married English woman on holiday with husband Bob (Leslie Banks) and daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam), who look on approvingly. When Hitchcock remakes this movie 22 years later with Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart, he has Ugly American Jimmy (the one privy to the dying man's last words) drug his hysterical wife in the first of many instances of Hitchcock undermining Stewart's status as everyone's favourite Yank. 1934's The Man Who Knew too Much, like so much of Hitchcock's British output (this is the first of his six films for Gaumont), remains current...Bill ChambersThe International (2009)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017ee88e4577970d2013-02-18T00:01:00-05:002013-02-16T17:26:03-05:00*/**** starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Brian F. O'Byrne screenplay by Eric Warren Singer directed by Tom Tykwer by Walter Chaw There's a shootout at the Guggenheim in the late-middle of The International that is the only real clue director Tom Tykwer had anything to do with the film. The rest of it, despite its title reminding of that Christopher Walken SNL skit about velvet smoking jackets and attempted rape, is just more of the same musty prestige-y Topical Picture™ that usually stars people like Sean Penn or Kevin Costner instead of, as The International does, Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Bland and blander, as it turns out. A rumpled Owen is Salinger, some kind of ill-defined crusader for justice with a badge from Interpol and a dark past from Syd Field, while Watts as ADA Elly, who spends her first scene with a Boston/Newark accent and the rest with her standard-issue Yank. They're tepid on the trail of a big giant bank that has a nefarious plan to control debt, which I confess is what I thought banks do. With the picture more interested in mashing its thumb against the "Relevant" button than in creating characters of...Bill ChambersNorth by Northwest (1959) - DVD|North by Northwest (1959) [50th Anniversary Edition] - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017ee81207b5970d2013-01-30T17:32:28-05:002013-01-30T17:34:11-05:00****/**** DVD - Image A Sound B Extras A BD - Image A+ Sound B+ Extras A starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis screenplay by Ernest Lehman directed by Alfred Hitchcock by Walter Chaw Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is Alfred Hitchcock's most mercurial anti-hero, the soup bone reduction of the Master's wrong-man theme. An advertising executive so at ease with changing his identity at the fall of a hammer, he has, by film's end, become/done all of the things he's wrongfully accused of being/doing at the beginning of the film. Indeed, Hitchcock would never again mine the idea of the wrong man with this kind of heat--veering off as he did into a more metaphysical kind of guilt transference à la Vertigo with The Birds, Psycho, and Marnie. As North by Northwest opens, Thornhill gives his regards to a night porter's wife ("We're not talkin'!"), steals a cab from a Good Samaritan, and instructs his secretary to send a neglected lover a box of gold-wrapped candy because "she'll think she's eating money." He's a charmer--and he's as oily, despicable, and fast-talking as almost every one of Grant's romantic comedy heroes. Hitch undermines and exploits Grant...Bill ChambersNotorious (1946) - Blu-ray Disctag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c017ee704ecaf970d2013-01-06T21:19:38-05:002013-01-06T21:07:45-05:00****/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C+ starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern screenplay by Ben Hecht directed by Alfred Hitchcock click any image to enlarge by Walter Chaw Other than Psycho, the most examined, most carefully raked-through picture in Hitchcock's filmography might be the cold, meticulous, perfect Notorious. It serves as a model for technique, offered as the pinnacle of Hitchcock's early American period and used as proof by some that Hitch was a misogynist. The Dark Side of Genius author Donald Spoto wrote a fitfully interesting (if ultimately useless) article about how the first half of the film is a mirror image of the second--rising to a midpoint before diminishing at the end to the same composition as the first shot. (I'd argue that you could say the same for Shadow of a Doubt--particularly during the movie's character-/setting- establishing sequences.) Stories of how the FBI began a file on Hitch because of his prescient use of uranium as his MacGuffin in Notorious are among the most beloved Hitch arcana, and critics who favour Lacan as the prism through which to analyze the Master of Suspense have found in the picture compelling demonstrations of spectatorship and...Bill Chambers